My Summer Vacation
by manyissues101
Summary: -post KHI pre CoM- It was the same assignment every year, and usually, Kairi wrote the same exact thing. This year however...


_What did you do on your summer vacation? Write a paper to turn in at the end of your first week._

The assignment was boringly simple, so easy that they'd done it every year since kindergarten, even though all the teachers knew what they'd done, the town being cramped on such a small island. It was the first time though, that Kairi's would be this hard.

_I wanted to see other worlds with my two best friends, you know, the ones that disappeared, but one ended up getting swept away in the darkness, one took my heart and obtained a mysterious weapon that looks like something out of a child's cartoon, and I ended up jettisoned to who knows where by a dark wind. _

She tapped the page with her eraser. That sounded a little fake...

_I fell in love with one of my best friends. He's everything I could ever want; sweet, fun, loyal, upbeat--the only problem is that long distance relationships are hard, especially when you have no idea where the guy is at, and you have to factor in your other best friend who is so obviously in love with you that it depresses you that you have to hurt him._

Maybe that was a little too much information. Besides, what teacher would care about what they'd dub as a 'summer romance,' even though Kairi knew it was much more? And writing about Riku...well, it hurt.

_During my summer, I got to visit new places and meet new people. I got attacked by shadow ants and saved the boy I love from becoming one of them; afterwards I gave him a lucky charm I've had for as long as I can remember. Then, a while later, I was mysteriously warped to a giant mass of white land with a solitary door. My friends were there, the boys that I love, and one closed the other behind the door and everything disappeared until I was standing alone on land that was drifting away and turning into home...and we made a promise._

This was harder than she'd thought. How to put this all delicately...?

_There's a guy. I really like him; I think--no, I know--that I love him. I figured that out this summer, when he took my heart. The only problem, he has other things to do, and can't be with me very much...but I understand. There's another problem to, actually, and it's my best friend in all the worlds, who I also love...in a different way. But I don't know if he sees that. He tried to get closer and closer to me this summer, but it just never happened. He can't steal my heart away from where it belongs. I feel really bad, too, but it's not like something I have control over. And now he's...run away, for lack of better words, and we don't know where he is or if he'll ever come back. And I miss him._

This was beginning to read like an angsty diary entry. Maybe she should stop sugar coating everything.

_My summer started off wonderfully, with my two best friends and I and a plan. Riku and Sora, who have always, always, competed for me, trying to impress (as suave as they thought they were, I've always seen right through them) and get me to fall in love--I think--with them...well, things were pretty normal with them. Until Riku started to get these ideas in his head, ideas like traveling to other worlds or about our destinies. Of course, Sora hates to be left behind, and I'd follow them both to the ends of the worlds, so we were quickly on board when Riku proposed we build a raft and sail it to the other worlds. That's when things turned disastrous, when Riku began to change for the worse and when Sora began to really take my heart. When the darkness overtook the island, we were all out to save our raft. I really don't know what happened, my heart wasn't there for long, and I drifted into some sort of coma-like state. You see, I'm a Princess of Heart--when my heart gets taken by the darkness, it gets...transferred. Transferred to Sora, who went on a big journey to get me back, always unaware that I was with him. He can be so dense sometimes! And the whole time, Riku was trying to get me back to, but in his own way. He sold himself to darkness...all for me. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it all--somehow I have to explain to him that I don't love him in the way I love Sora, that my heart belongs to someone else...but I'll figure that out when I get there. Right now, I have bigger problems. Riku and Sora are still gone, and though Sora promised to come back for me, I'm still worried. I need them...it's not right with them gone._

Kairi shook her head and crossed that out. It was too...easy.

_When the darkness first attacked me, I couldn't breath. It seeped into all my senses, trying to suffocate my heart and force it out of my body, into it's gaping black mouth. But it couldn't, my heart was too pure for it, so it tried harder and harder...until I was nothing at all, or so it felt, limp and simple, dumb and paralyzed. I couldn't move, or think, or do anything but feel. The heartless was going at me from all directions, trying to force me over to the darkness, unaware that it's plights would be fruitless. Still and still, it tried, before finally giving up to go harass someone else. Later, I'd realize that that someone else would be Riku and Sora. Then, though, dark wisps in the air marked the presence of the heartless, eating the core of our home from the inside. I swayed, unsteady and not all there, in front of the door in the secret place, which I'd seen and tried to run, to tell the others, until assaulted. When Sora came in, I could feel it somehow, like the darkness in the room got lighter, less heavy. He called out...was it my name? It was so hard to tell at that point...but I think I turned to answer him, like my heart was already responding to his presence, and that's when the door swung open. That's when the core was gone. A dark force, more lethal than wind, swept me into him...and away. That's all I really knew for a long time, and a lot of that is only a guessed blur, the other lot a secondhand account of Yuffie's, as told by Sora when he first told them about me. I remember even less from my coma. Just being in the dark, all the pressure of the realm upon my shoulders, without even the strength to wonder why. I remember feeling the heaviness momentarily drain away, and I could even move underneath it, but it didn't take long to come back. I remember hearing two voices, one that made it easier to breathe, and one that made me feel safe even in the dark. And all the while I didn't even have the strength or energy to be properly scared. When I did finally get myself back, get my heart back, the first thing I saw was Sora. Sora, whose journey I sort of knew now, he held his memories partly inside my heart, fading away into tiny pinpricks of light that would stab the darkness trying to take him, I was sure. I stood up to grab him, help him as he'd helped me, but he was gone. Sora. My Sora; my heart. He was gone. But I got to see Riku, and he made my heart pang too, because I wasn't sure what had happened to him, but I could tell that it wasn't right. Still, I trusted him, so I ran just as he ordered me to. Luckily, we were ambushed near the entrance to the world. Ambushed by a group of heartless that...weren't all heartless. One was mine. Sora; even as a Shadow I knew him, and so I embraced him because it was my turn to sacrifice. And it did something, because he was suddenly back in his body, now holding me in his arms, and that's when I knew for sure that he was where I was meant to be. But we couldn't stay for long, and so we flew out of there. I remember sitting in the seats crying, silently and not facing Sora, because I wouldn't let him see me so upset, even though I was sure that leaving Riku had hurt him just as much. We grew closer and closer the next week or so, until one day he told me that he'd go to the end. I nodded along, looking at the ground, praying fervently that something so trivial as a little girl's lucky charm was enough to keep him safe. And it must have been, because I was whisked to him all at once, but it wasn't just him, it was Riku too, but Riku wasn't there to see me, or to let me make it all better, no, he was there to be the martyr that I was too weak to be. And I was so concentrated on everything that when the ground beneath my feet (I was wearing purple shoes, never before had I been so focused on the fact...it seemed trivial, silly, to wear purple shoes after all I'd been through) began to sink backwards I was caught off guard, and Sora, who'd been running towards me, had to hold out his arms to catch me. He didn't step over to my side, though, and I knew why. I understood why. But I didn't like it. So I made him promise me to come back, to come back for me, to be with me, no matter what he ran into out there. After all, our hearts are connected, I couldn't very well ignore that. So, soon afterwards, I was home. Destiny Islands, where we were now. If the boy I love hadn't had the courage to stay out in the universe, you likely wouldn't be here right now. This is his sacrifice. _

Kairi erased the page violently, huffing away the pesky eraser residue. On the newly blank lines, she scrawled a single sentence.

_During my vacation, I got a lot of sleep._

0-FIN-0

I really don't like anything but the last line, which is the line that inspired me to write this whole thing. I got out of school today, the 4th, which is when I'm writing this. Sitting right next to my new purple cell phone, Penelope, I might add. I love her.

In less than two weeks I'm going in for my surgery, so don't expect many updates for a while. I'm so excited! I'm not looking forward to learning to use crutches though...

Anway, I'd love a review! Thanks in advance!


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